Kirjahaku

Bill Sublette (1799-1845) led two lives. Renowned as a hardy mountain man, he ranged the Missouri, Big Horn, Yellowstone, and Sweetwater River country between 1823 and 1833 hunting beaver, fighting Indians, and unwittingly opening the West for settlers (he proved that wagons could be used effectively on the Oregon Trail). Financial success and silk hats, which strangled the fur trade, later forced him to a less adventuresome life in St. Louis as a gentleman farmer, businessman, and politician.Not only did Sublette help develop the rendezvous system in the fur trade and blaze the first wagon trail through South pass, but also he established what was later Fort Laramie, was a participant in laying the foundation for present Kansas City, and left a large fortune to excite envy and exaggeration, One of the most successful fur merchants of the West, he also helped to break John Jacob Astor's monopoly of the trade.

By beginning where the standard works leave off and carrying the story up to its logical conclusion in 1865, this book fills a definite void in the history of the fur trade in the American West. Set in the upper Missouri country, which was bypassed by settlement until the 1860s, it focuses primarily upon the St. Louis firm of Pierre Chouteau, Jr., and Company, usually known as the American Fur Company....This is not the distorted and romanticized approach so typical of much of the literature on the earlier fur trade. Drama is inherent, but it is sound, well-conceived, carefully documented history.""-American Historical Review